Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Long-Distance Incense Offering Across Worlds – Communion with Gods

Ding—

At 4:30 a.m., Tu Hua’s WeChat lit up with a new notification.

A friend request.

She was halfway through repainting highlights on a draft. She flicked her eyes over the screen, decided it could wait, and kept working.

Then her phone started acting possessed.

The screen hopped. Icons jittered. A system prompt popped up, and then another, as if someone else had their finger on her glass.

“You have added Xie Yu Chuan. You can start chatting now.”

Tu Hua blinked. “Huh?”

A wall of text slammed into the chat.

“Xie Yu Chuan: Household God above! This junior, Xie Yu Chuan, courtesy name Yu Heng, is an eleventh-generation descendant of the Xie Clan. Our ancestor once received the deity’s manifestation and protection and survived certain death. For generations, we have remembered the Household God’s grace and teachings, guarding the borderlands to protect the realm and keep the people safe.”

“Xie Yu Chuan: Today, the foolish ruler has no virtue and traitors hold power. The Xie Clan has suffered a great calamity. Yu Heng is ashamed before the ancestors and our family. I will go beneath the nine springs to beg forgiveness at our forebears’ feet, but the Xie family still has elders, women, children, and many little ones who are truly innocent.”

“Xie Yu Chuan: Yu Heng sincerely begs the Xie Clan’s Household God to shelter them in this crisis, if only a little!”

“Xie Yu Chuan: The imperial prison is harsh, and I have no money left. I can only gaze toward the ancestral hall’s divine seat from afar, burn incense with all my heart, and pray that my thoughts can reach the deity. Heaven and earth bear witness; the sun and moon can see.”

Tu Hua stared at the screen.

Every word was English. Every word was comprehensible.

Together, they were pure nonsense.

Who was Xie Yu Chuan?

And since when did WeChat add friends without asking?

She was still trying to decide whether this was a prank, a hack, or a new level of sleep deprivation when two crisp, mechanical voices clicked to life inside her skull—like someone had switched on a pair of speakers behind her eyes.

“Collected 2 bloodline points. All-Purpose Guardian System activated.”

“Bloodline protection operation: online.”

Tu Hua’s brain stalled. Fully. Like an overworked laptop deciding to update itself at the worst possible moment.

Then the house made a sound.

Not a creak. Not the pipes.

A wrong sound—heavy, distant, like a crowd moving in a place that shouldn’t exist.

“Don’t tell me it’s an earthquake,” she muttered, and yanked open the curtains.

Outside her window was a sprawling traditional mansion—five courtyards deep, side wings stretching wide—like something that belonged behind velvet ropes and a ticket booth.

And it was chaos.

Soldiers swarmed the grounds with drawn blades. Servants scattered, sleeves flapping as they ran, faces white with terror.

A voice thundered from the front courtyard, sharp as a gong.

“By imperial order, I am here to raid Protector Duke Manor! Search every inch, inside and out! Not a single person from Xie Manor is to escape!”

“Yes, my lord!”

Tu Hua’s first thought was painfully reasonable.

A film crew?

At dawn?

And they’d picked the “family wiped out” genre?

These days, everybody hustled.

She didn’t plan to watch. She was a freelance artist with a deadline, and deadlines didn’t care about historical dramas.

Then her eyes caught a sword.

That wasn’t stage blood.

It was wet. Dark. Real.

A household guard lunged to block a soldier. In the next blink, he was cut clean in two.

Tu Hua’s stomach dropped so hard it felt like it hit her shoes.

She ran.

Downstairs, her living room was gone.

In its place stood a cold ancestral hall, incense smoke hanging in the air like a warning. The floor was polished stone. The pillars were lacquered black. The space felt old enough to remember wars.

The main doors stood open. Dozens of guards held a tight line at the entrance, blades angled outward.

A man in official robes strode forward and snapped his sleeve like he was cracking a whip.

Vice Minister of Justice Qiu Suan.

“Xie Zhang Ting colluded with foreign powers and betrayed the nation!” he barked. “I act on the holy decree to confiscate this place. Old Madam Xie—are you defying the imperial order?”

An elderly woman planted her cane like a spear and spat back, “You crooked dog! Stop talking shit! The Xie ancestral hall enshrines the deity and our ancestors. It is a pure place. Even the former emperor decreed it must not be disturbed at will. And you come waving torches and steel like bandits? That’s disrespecting heaven and defying the former emperor’s final edict. How dare you!”

Her voice cut through the hall like a blade—no tremble, no fear, only fury.

Tu Hua’s skin prickled. The woman was shaking, but not from weakness. From rage held too long.

Rumors had always circled the Xie household god—how, a hundred years ago, the deity had manifested, helped the former emperor seize the realm, and left the Xie family as a pillar the court could never quite break.

But the current emperor—foolish, paranoid—had listened to whispered poison: If you want the throne secure, first destroy the Xie family’s household god.

They couldn’t find true fault with the Xie family, so they manufactured one. Collusion. Treason. A raid dressed up as justice.

Today’s real goal was simple: smash the shrine.

And the Xie family wasn’t letting them through.

If the shrine fell, what would they be but unfilial descendants?

Qiu Suan’s smile sharpened. “Fine. Fine. Fine. So you’re stubborn to the end—you won’t cry until you see a coffin.”

“The tablets were bestowed by the Founding Emperor himself,” someone snapped back from the Xie side. “They carry merit enough to spare lives. Even if the Xie family were guilty—let alone wrongly accused—calamity has never been allowed to reach the family shrine. Act like this and you’ll be struck by lightning!”

Qiu Suan laughed like that was the funniest thing he’d heard all year.

“What a joke. Your Xie Clan dug its own grave by worshiping an evil spirit. What does that have to do with me? Today I will carry out heaven’s justice and wipe out this cursed thing, to set things right!”

He lifted a hand.

“Imperial Guards. Hear my command!”

Fire-archers sprang up along the walls, torches flaring. Dozens—then hundreds—of flaming arrows angled toward the shrine.

Tu Hua’s mouth went dry.

One shout away.

Old Madam Xie swung her cane across her body, blocking the doorway like a gate. “Then step over my corpse if you dare!”

Tu Hua finally connected the dots her mind had been refusing to touch.

The bizarre WeChat prayer. The voices in her head.

Xie Yu Chuan hadn’t just messaged her.

He’d dragged her here.

House and all.

To protect his family.

She looked down at her empty hands. “Okay, but… how?”

There wasn’t time to finish the thought.

Outside, someone roared, “Fire!”

Flaming arrows screamed in from every direction.

The first wave struck the roof. Sparks burst. Fire caught fast, crawling over dry beams like it had been starving.

Heat slammed into the hall in a sudden, violent breath.

Old Madam Xie whipped her cane, knocking back an attacker, then turned—eyes wide—toward the blaze behind her.

A single flaming arrow flew straight at her chest.

“Grandmother, watch out!”

Tu Hua’s heart stopped.

Old Madam Xie’s wrist dipped as if a hand had seized her—except there was no hand. A warm force lifted her clean off the ground and carried her backward into the shrine.

The arrow that should’ve buried itself in her ribs slammed into something invisible and snapped back like it had hit a wall.

It flew straight into the crowd.

A few guards went down with wet, choking sounds. Arrows through flesh. Bodies collapsing like their bones had simply quit.

Tu Hua stood frozen, watching another flaming arrow zip toward her—and rebound again at the last instant.

She swallowed hard. “System. That was you, wasn’t it?”

A calm, synthetic voice answered inside her head. “Protecting the host’s life and safety is my responsibility.”

Then, like it was reading a battery warning: “You are currently in power-saving invisibility mode. Energy below 60%. Do not make physical contact with outside living sources, or the system may crash.”

Tu Hua blinked. “So I’m basically a haunted smartphone with a battery problem. Got it.”

Another prompt flashed in her mind like a pop-up ad she couldn’t close: “Safety shield net is under attack. Enable emergency security system to reinforce protection?”

“Enable,” Tu Hua said immediately.

If she was getting free protection, she was taking it.

Her phone lit up on its own. A purple-and-gold security app downloaded instantly, opened itself, and started running like it owned the place.

A netlike shimmer spread over the shrine—thin, rippling light, like woven water.

The next rain of fire-arrows struck and ricocheted back in a heartbeat.

Screams tore the air.

Men toppled off the walls like broken dolls, hitting the ground with sickening thuds.

Qiu Suan’s knees gave out. He collapsed into the mud, staring at the shrine like it had grown teeth.

Among the detained servants, someone shrieked, “The Xie family deity has manifested!”

People dropped to their knees, foreheads slamming into the ground.

Even some raiding soldiers faltered, faces going gray. Burning a shrine was one thing. Angering whatever lived inside it was another.

But the imperial guards commander sneered, chin lifted. “So the Xie family really does worship an evil spirit. Under heaven’s might, they dare rebel and cause chaos. Official Qiu—don’t fail His Majesty’s trust.”

Qiu Suan flinched, then clung to the words like driftwood.

Right.

If they died, it would be the Xies’ fault. Heaven’s fault. Anyone’s fault but his.

He scrambled up, pointed at the shrine, and screamed until his voice cracked.

“Burn them to death!”